Where The Truth Is

When I lie, it is auto­matic. I don’t think about it – although it is com­ing straight from my brain. My mouth opens and out it comes and I then have the chore of liv­ing with it, embell­ish­ing it (you thought the truth was embell­ished, but noth­ing com­pares to the embell­ish­ments a lie requires), refram­ing it, expos­ing it – maybe, destroy­ing, and hard­est of all, remem­ber­ing it. My abil­ity to do this feels psy­cho­pathic, except I believe you are the same way and enough of you are the same way that we either agree this is how lying goes, or we agree to all be psy­chopaths. I am good with either.
Since I was a boy I found that I could man­u­fac­ture safety, or what I made up was safety, by hav­ing a secret world. The secret world, oddly enough, con­tained truth or some sem­blance of it and the fence around the truth, was lies. I could not afford to tell you the truth. This dis­torted truth I hid was that I was unwor­thy of you know­ing me, lov­ing me. It was shame. I don’t know why. The world I made up for you was a lie to pro­tect the some­thing awful inside me. I can still do this, or more truth­fully: I still do this, lie to pro­tect the some­thing inside. The prob­lem with these fences is that they must be walls, of con­crete. No one can get in even a lit­tle or else the lie is exposed and the mural of me I paint on the wall of lies for you to believe is me, is no longer quite right. These kinds of fences do not make good neigh­bors. They make lonely boys who will never be men. Lying is com­pli­cated. The truth is not easy, but it is simple.

At the top of this blog’s home­page is this line:
the record of a surgeon’s unlikely jour­ney from his curi­ous mind to his way­ward heart...

As I look at it now I know that my heart has been wan­der­ing, pos­si­bly way­ward but prob­a­bly not. It has been look­ing for me. It is a short trip from my head, which is so bent on unnec­es­sary and over­wrought and ego-based pro­tec­tion of me (my sad shame) to my heart. And here is what I have learned: when I am nes­tled into my heart I can’t lie. My truth, the per­son I truly am, resides in my heart. When I am telling you my feel­ings from this odd, weird, non-anatomical part of me called my heart, I am telling you the truth. I don’t lie there. I become (I became!) a man there. I find my heart with prac­tice, with help, with help, with help. It is a thin yel­low line across the con­crete walls of shame.
In yoga (I am an expert now), there are poses that bring the heart to the fore, that teach me to lead with my heart, to look for places where it is right to lead with my heart– Cobra pose or Upward Fac­ing Dog – seri­ously? When I am lead­ing with my heart I am in the truth and I line up with my integrity. My brain then roams free, min­gles with beauty and becomes an amaz­ing play­ground. When I speak from my heart, my voice is level, clear, clean, strong and not in need of you to prop me up, make me ok; but is also not alone. It is seek­ing you to help me in this amaz­ing and chal­leng­ing work of becom­ing my real person.